What does chump mean?
Chump is an informal noun meaning a foolish, gullible, or easily exploited person — someone who can be cheated, tricked, or talked into anything. It carries a dismissive, mildly contemptuous tone: to call someone a chump is to say they lack the sense to protect their own interests. The word appears frequently in American slang and in hard-boiled fiction, where con men and hustlers speak of finding a chump to swindle. It also survives in the idiom 'chump change,' meaning a trivially small sum of money, which reinforces the association with insignificance. Curiously, the word's earliest recorded meaning was physical rather than personal: a short, thick block of wood chopped for burning. That timber sense lives on only in the British term 'chump chop,' a cut of lamb from the neck. The human sense developed by metaphor from the wooden one, implying a blockheaded, unthinking person. Chump remains a vivid, punchy insult in casual speech, though it is too informal for formal writing.
A foolish, gullible, or easily deceived person.
"Don't be a chump — read the contract before you sign it."
Informal; mildly derogatory.
A short, thick block of wood chopped for fuel (chiefly historical).
"The yard was stacked with chumps ready for the winter."
Now rare except in British butcher's terminology.
Standard plural; no irregular forms.
"The card sharp made his living off chumps."
Before it meant a sucker, 'chump' was literally a block of firewood — and butchers still sell 'chump chops' cut from that same old sense.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of chump
Chump first appeared in English in the late seventeenth century as a term for a short, thick block of wood, likely related to words such as 'chunk' and 'chop' describing cut pieces of timber. By the early twentieth century it had acquired its figurative sense of a blockheaded, gullible person, popularized especially in American slang and pulp fiction. The word is Germanic in origin, belonging to a family of English terms for lumps and cut pieces rather than deriving from any classical root.
How chump is actually used
Informal and mildly derogatory; common in American colloquial speech and classic crime fiction. The wood-block sense survives mainly in British butcher's terminology ('chump chop').
Easily confused with chump
'Chump' is a fool or a block of wood, while 'chump chop' is a cut of lamb or mutton taken from the neck, named after the wood-block sense.
'Chump' alone is the person; 'chump change' is an idiom for a trivially small amount of money.